~ musings on the hand-written life

Smash Journal

So I was wandering around HomeSense before Christmas, trying to find something for that one last person on my list. I didn’t find anything for him, but I found something for me: a Smash Journal by K&Company (the same folks who did the Journal Pockets). The packaging and colours appealed to me so it became a gift for me.

Before I unwrapped it I took a picture.

I looked them up online and apparently I bought the Retro Smash Journal. And it seems to have a travel theme. Truth be told, I really wanted the stamp and this package was the only one that had one.

*__________ (it’s actually a box that you can write your own short message in)

Happy Place

HOT MESS

TO DO

The list pad.

The list pad follows along the travel theme. Each note is detachable, with themes like Don’t Forget To Bring…, Best Trip Ever:, and Travel Nightmare: A True Story of a Vacation Gone Bad.

The cover label.

A close up of the cover. It kind of reminds me of shortbread cookies!

These pictures of the first page label didn’t photograph as clearly as I would have liked. But you get the idea. Fun!

I love the notion of Messy and Beautiful.

This is one of the pages I’m working on. I pasted two pictures from a vintage London calendar and in the middle you can see the results of the stamp.

I really like the crispness of the characters on the stamp.

An example of one of the List Pad notes.

Love the pen! Such a great idea to have one end a glue stick.

That’s my progress so far. I still have ephemera from the London trip I can add in here. And possibly other trips as well. I think some of the pages are quite nice the way they are and I don’t want to change them, but then I have to remember that it’s an art project. I wrote on the first page: Nothing you do here is wrong. Enjoy the freedom to be messy.

SmashBooks! Yeah, I stumbled onto your blog Googling Paperblanks FIligree journals and here I am. I just discovered SmashBooks last year. At first I was put off by the “gimmicky” name/idea/marketing. It seemed like it was “trying too hard” to be the anti-scrapbook. Then I bought one and got hooked. I like how the inside papers are pretty… even glueing a normal birthday card onto a scrapbook page looks cute in SmashBooks because of the patterned papers. And the little themed notebooks and stuff to add to them makes them fun too.

I understand completely! I felt the same way and then I started using one. I don’t add to it very often but sometimes I will have a card or a ticket stub and it just seems to fit best on a Smashbook page.